In less than a minute of time, HEA office employees
can retrieve vital information from an AMR meter.
“Almost instantaneously, we can check voltage, look at
the history of outages at a location, and determine
usage right from our office even though it may be
located miles away,” said Paul Rauch, Information
Services Analyst for the Automated Meter Reading
Project. “All this adds up to better service for our
consumers and very few estimated bills.”
Two years ago Homer Electric Association made an
important decision to install the CANNON Technologies
automated meter reading system. The project began
with a small sampling of 300 meters in the Kasilof and
Kenai substation areas and has grown today to over
16,000 residential AMR meters in the North Kenai,
Soldotna, Beaver Creek, Funny River Road, and parts of
Sterling areas. And, 84% of these meters are
reporting a reading automatically each month to the
billing system. With the help of meter reading staff
reading meters manually in areas where there is no
signal, or an AMR meter has not yet been installed,
98% of our consumers’ meters are being read each
month. The benefits of the system are being
realized. “Consumers are pleased to receive a bill
for the amount of energy they actually used, instead
of an estimate,” says Sandra Ghormley, Manager of the
AMR Project.
The new CANNON
system has changed the way HEA does business. For
example, members moving from one location to another
need not provide and “in or out” meter reading, as
this can be done by the HEA office staff. When a
consumer calls to say they are out of power, a quick
check from the office determines if there is voltage
up to the meter so that the appropriate action can be
taken to resolve the outage. Fewer estimated billings
have reduced the number of consumer calls and
complaints lodged. “Accurate, timely, readings lower
the costs of preparing and processing consumer bills,”
said Mrs. Ghormley.
Although, the new
power-line carrier system is state-of-art technology,
it does not work perfectly all the time. The
communication equipment must be installed in the
closest substation before the signal is available for
meters. A power outage or faulty/failing equipment
either on HEA’s facilities or at the consumer’s site
can interrupt the signal. If the problem coincides
with reading the meter, the consumer may get an
estimated billing for that month. However, this is
usually a temporary problem.
In the near
future, HEA expects to use the CANNON AMR system to
locate power outages before a consumer calls in to
report a problem, and may someday utilize a consumer’s
outage history record to determine whether or not
equipment or line maintenance is needed. With
automated remote connect and disconnect capability,
prepaid metering is a new service on the horizon.
Remote meter shut-off services can occur right from
the office without a field visit. The AMR system
information will be essential to gathering important
consumption/usage information in order for HEA to
conduct system-wide load surveys. “Really, we are
still in the infant stage of understanding all
software and hardware capabilities, and there are many
more features offered that we have not yet begun to
explore. We’re working with a company (CANNON
Technologies) that continually seeks to improve and
update the system for their customers,” says Darrell
Graber, AMR Meter Technician.
Next year, HEA
will install another 5,000 meters from Ninilchik to
Anchor Point. Communication equipment in the Anchor
Point Substation is expected to come on-line around
June 2008. “By 2010, the Automated Meter Reading
system should be fully deployed throughout the HEA
service territory, and this will be a great day,” said
Brad Janorschke, General Manager.
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